弗洛伊德：回忆、重复与修通（1914）REMEMBERING, REPEATING ANDWORKING-THROUGH
(FURTHER RECOMMENDATIONS ONTHE TECHNIQUE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS II)关于精神分析技术的进一步的建议
译者：班鸠 、M.André
对于我来说，似乎没有必要提醒学生们，精神分析技术从它最早的开端以来所经历的广泛改变。在它的第一阶段--布洛伊尔的精神宣泄的那个阶段--它存在于把过去形成症状的那个瞬间直接带入焦点，且为了指导它们（心理历程）在意识活动的道路中宣泄,它还存在于坚持竭力使涉及那个情境的心理历程重现在脑海。
在催眠状态的帮助下，回忆和宣泄，是那段时间针对的东西。接下来，在催眠被放弃的地方，（分析的）任务，变成了我们从病人的自由联想中发现他不能回忆起来的东西。
阻抗将被解释之工作和使病人知道它（解释）的结果这一工作所包围。曾经引起症状形成的那些情境，另一些存在于疾病爆发瞬间的背后的情境，都把它们的情形保留，成为兴趣的焦点。但是发泄的决定因素已不再重要，同时，按照精神分析的基本规则，这个因素似乎由工作支出（expenditureof work）代替，而这个工作支出，是病人在克服对他自由联想的批评时，必须做的。 去坚持的技术被改进了。在今天，精神分析家放弃了把一个特殊的瞬间或者问题带入焦点的尝试。
他满足于研究在病人心灵表层里暂时存在的一切东西，然后，为了识别那里出现的阻抗并使病人意识到它们（阻抗），他主要运用了解释之艺术。 由此，结果就有了一种新的工作分割：医生揭露病人不知道的阻抗；而当这些（阻抗）被打败的时候，病人经常毫无困难地叙述那些被遗忘的情境和关系。
不同技术的目的，当然，仍然保持一致。陈述性地说，它是为了填补记忆的缺口；生动地说，它是为了克服因为压抑而产生的阻抗。
我们还必须感谢古老的催眠技术，因为在我们之前，它已经把个别的心理分析过程带入一个单独的或者纲要的形式。在我们之前，只有这个能够给我们自己以勇气去创造分析治疗中更多更复杂的情境，并使它们（这些情境）保持清晰。
在这些催眠治疗中，回忆的过程采取了一种很简单的形式。病人把自己放回到一个早期的情境中，在这个情境中，他似乎从没有把它（早期的情境）和现在的情境混同，并且，叙述了属于早期的情境的那些心理历程，因为至今为止，那些心理历程仍然保持正常；然后，他添加这个“一切能够浮现的东西”，作为把在那段时间里曾是无意识的过程转换成意识的过程之结果。
在这时候，我将要插入一些每个分析家在他的观察中发现并确认的评论。忘记印象、场景或者经验，它本身几乎总在隔离它们（印象、场景或经验）。
当病人谈到这些忘记了的事情时，他很少没有补充说：“事实上我总是知道它，只是我从来没有想起过它。没有足够的、他可以称作忘记了的东西—自从它们发生他就从没有想起过的东西，进入他的头脑中，因为这个事实，他经常表达失望。然而，实际上，这个欲望得到满足了，特别是在转换型癔症的情况中。
当我们评估如此普遍存在的屏蔽记忆的真实价值时，“忘记”仍旧变成更进一步的限制。在一些情况下，我有一个印象：这个熟悉的、理论上对我们如此重要的、童年时期的记忆缺失完全被屏蔽记忆弥补了。
不仅是一些而且是全部的、来自童年的基本的东西都一直保存在这些记忆里。这仅仅是一个如何知道通过分析把它从这些记忆中提取出来的问题。他们充分地描绘了那些忘记了的童年岁月，就如同一个梦的梦境（manifestcontent）充分地描绘了梦的思想。
另一组心理过程----幻想（phantasies），关联的过程（processesof reference），情感冲动，思想联结----单纯地作为内部的活动，可以与印象和经历形成对照的（一组心理过程），必须，在它们与忘记和回忆的关系中，被分开地考虑。在这些过程中，经常特别碰巧地出现：某件根本不曾被“忘记”的事情被“记起”了，因为它在任何时候都从来没有被注意----从来没有被意识到。
至于心理事件占据的这个过程，不管这样一个思想联系曾经是意识的而后被忘记，或者还是从来都没能成为意识的，这似乎没有影响。病人在他的分析过程中获取的信念是完全独立于这种记忆的。
特别是，在很多强迫性神经症的不同形式中，遗忘大多数仅限于使思想联结（thought-connections）断裂，不能得出正确的结论和单独的记忆。 有一种极度重要的特别的经历，对此，通常没有记忆能够恢复。这些是发生在很早的童年时期，而当时没有被理解，但是后来被理解和解释的经历。
我们通过梦获得对它们（经历）一定程度的认识，同时在最引人注目的，由神经症的结构提供的证据上，我们不得不信任他们。此外，对于我们自己，我们可以确定，病人，在他的阻抗被克服之后，不再如同一个拒绝去接受它们的场所一样，引起它们（经历）（任何伴随着他们的熟悉的感觉）的任何记忆的缺席。
这个新奇的和令人吃惊的事件，然而，需要如此多的批评的警告和介绍，以至于我计划保留它，作为一个单独的，和适当的材料有关的讨论。
在极少的新的技术下，经常，在事件的欣然流畅的过程中，没有什么东西被留下。有一些情况，在某种程度上， 表现得像那些催眠技术下的情况一样，而且，只有后来不再这样表现；但是其他的（情况）从开始时就表现得不一样。为了显示这个不同点，如果我们只谈论第二种类型，我们可能会说，病人没有回忆起任何他已经忘记和压抑了的东西，但是（他）用行动把它表现出来了。他使它重现，不是作为一个记忆而是作为一个行动；他重复它，当然，是在不知道他正在重复它情况下。
例如，病人没有说他记得，他过去对他的父母的权威是挑衅的和批评的；相反，他用那样的方式对他的医生表现出来。
他没有记得，在他的婴儿的性的研究中，他怎样进入到一个无助的绝望的僵局；但是他产生了一堆困惑的梦和联想，抱怨在任何事情中都没有能成功，并且确定，他是命中注定了绝对不可能完成他承担的事情。
他没有记得，他曾经强烈地羞耻于某些性的活动并且害怕它们被发现；但是他清楚，他羞耻于他现在着手的治疗，并且努力去对每个人保密。等等。
首先，病人会以这种重复开始他的治疗。当我们（分析家）向一个带着一个多变故的生活史和一个长的疾病的故事的病人宣告精神分析的基本规则，然后，要求他说出出现的脑海中的东西时，我们期望他倾吐出一大批的信息；但是，经常发生的第一件事情是，他什么都没有说。 他沉默，并且声称没有什么事情发生在他身上。当然，这个仅仅是一个同性恋的态度的重复，这个态度作为一个对回忆任何事情的阻抗涌现出来。只要病人是在治疗中，他就不能逃离这个强迫性重复；最后，我们明白这是他的回忆的方式。
首先，让我们感兴趣的自然是，对移情的强迫性重复与对阻抗的强迫性重复的关系。 我们很快察觉到，移情它本身仅仅是重复的一部分，并且重复是一个被遗忘的过去的移情，这个移情不仅是朝向医生的，也是朝向现在的情境的其他方面的。
因此，我们必须准备好，不仅在他的个人的对医生的态度中，而且在其他的每一个活动和那时候占据他的生活的关系中—--例如，在他的治疗期间，他坠入了爱河或者承担一个任务或者开始一个事业，去发现病人屈服于强迫性重复，这个强迫性重复现在替代这个冲动去回忆。
阻抗扮演的角色也是容易识别的。阻抗越大，它就会更广泛地替代回忆用行动表现（重复）出来。
对于这个思想，在催眠的状态下出现的、对已经遗忘的东西的回忆与一种阻抗被完全放在一边的状态相匹配。如果病人在一种温和的、不做判断的、积极的移情的保护下，开始他的治疗，那么，他最初可能像在催眠状态下一样，去探究他的记忆，同时，在这段时间里，他的由疾病引起的症状本身是沉寂的。
但是，如果，当分析家开始（分析），移情变成敌对的或者过度热情的时候，因此，在需要压抑的时候，回忆马上给行动表现让道。从那开始往前，阻抗决定了将被重复的材料的顺序。病人从过去的军械库中拿出武器，用这些武器，他对抗治疗的过程来防护他自己—这些是我们必须从他那里一个一个努力夺取的武器。
我们已经了解到，病人用重复替代回忆，并且在阻抗的条件下产生重复。现在我们可以问，实际上什么是他重复的或者用行动表现的东西。
答案是，他重复每一件已从被压抑的东西这个源头进入到他明显的个性中的东西—他的抑制、不能胜任的态度和他的病态性格特质。
他也重复他所有的在治疗中的症状。现在，我们能够看到，在对强迫性重复的关注中，我们没有获得新的事实，但是得到一个更广泛的视野。
我们仅仅使自己清楚这个事情，即病人生病的状态在他的分析的开始没有能够停止，而且我们必须治疗他的疾病，不是当做过去的一件事情，而是当做一个现在的压力。
在治疗的操作的领域和范围内，一块一块地，疾病的状态被带出来，然后，当病人如同某件当代的真实的事物一样体验它时，我们必须对它做我们的治疗工作，这个工作在很大程度上包含在对过去的追溯中。
回忆，就像在催眠状态中诱发出来的（回忆），只能给我们一种在实验室里开展实验那样的印象。重复，根据新式技术而在分析治疗中诱导出来的（重复），另一方面，它暗示着想象出来的一个现实生活片段，因为这个原因，它并非时常无害且无可非议。这个思考展现出了整个问题，这个问题就是，如此频繁而不能避免是什么？——“治疗过程中的疾病恶化”。
第一的，也是最主要的是，在治疗的最初阶段，治疗本身在患者对他自己疾病的态度中要带来一种改变。他（患者）时常甘愿感叹他的疾病，轻视它，就像对它毫无感觉，并且低估它的严重性。还有就是，他对疾病延伸出来的表征采取一种压抑的，鸵鸟政策。他用这种压抑来面对疾病的起源。 这就是说，可能发生的是，他没能正确地认识到他的恐惧症是在什么条件下发作，他不听对他强迫观念的精确描述，他没有抓住他强迫冲动的实际目的。而治疗当然不是用这些来助人。他必须找到勇气来将他的注意力直面他的疾病现象。他的疾病自身对他而言必须不再是不屑一顾的，而必须成为一个值得他与之斗争的敌人，成为他人格的一部分，它有着支持它存在的坚实基础，而在这之外，他必须得到对他未来生活有重要价值的事物。铺这条路的起点就是与受压抑的材料和解，而这些材料将表现在他的症状中，同时，对疾病状态的忍耐之地也能够被找到。如果这个对疾病的新态度强化了冲突，并且带来了先前的症状，这症状后来仍然不明显，那么我们可以简单地安抚病人，并（向他们）指出这些情况是必要的，而且只是暂时的恶化。并且人们不可能去战胜一个根本不在场的或是不在（攻击）范围中的敌人。（那么）然而，抵抗物会为了自己的目的而利用这个情况，并且将许可证肆意发给疾病（将疾病合理化），它好像在说：“瞧，如果我真的给这样一些事物让出一条大道（让其大白于意识之中）。难道我将它们放入压抑中不对吗？”年轻人和孩子们尤其倾向于使通过关注症状的治疗工作所强加的必要性成为一个受人欢迎的借口，利用这个借口在症状中尽情享乐。
更进一步的危险来自这样一个事实：在治疗的过程中，新的、存在于更深层次的本能冲动，那些迄今为止还没有让它们自己被感觉到的冲动，可能会变成“被重复的（东西）”。最后，有可能，病人移情关系之外的行动在他平常的生活中对他造成临时的伤害，乃至被如此选中来使他的恢复的希望永久地作废了。
医生在这种情况下采用的策略，毫无疑问是合乎情理的。对于医生来说，以旧的方式回忆--在心理领域中的再现—是他坚持的目标，尽管他知道这样一个目标在新的技术下也不可能达到。
他在准备一个与他的病人的长期斗争，以使病人想要压制进入原动领域的所有的冲动保持在心理领域。如果他能够促使，病人想要以行动宣泄的某个东西通过回忆的工作得到解决，他就会把这当做治疗的一个胜利来庆祝。
如果通过移情（形成的）依恋已经发展为很有用的某个东西，治疗就能够阻止病人践行任何更为重要的重复性行动，而且为了心理治疗的工作，还能在萌芽状态时，利用他的意图作为材料来这么做。
通过使病人承诺在他的治疗期间不去做出任何重要的影响他生活的决定----比如，不去选择任何一个职业或者决定性的恋爱—对象—而是把所有这样的计划推迟，直到他痊愈之后；我们可以最大程度地保护病人免受实现他的其中一个冲动所带来的伤害。
与此同时，我们也乐意尽可能地不去干涉病人的个人自由，而这与这些限制条件是不矛盾的，我们也不阻碍他实现一些不重要的意图，即使它们（意图）是愚蠢的；我们不要忘记，事实上，只有通过他自己的经历和灾难，一个人才能认识道理。
也有一些人们，我们不能阻止他们在治疗期间投入到某个相当不受欢迎的计划中，他们也只有后来才准备好并能够进入分析。
偶尔，也必然会发生：在有（足够的）时间把移情之感情加到本能之上之前，无法抑制的本能声张它们自己，；或者必然发生：那些把病人和治疗拴住的镣铐在一个重复的行动中被打破。
我可以引用一个上了年纪的女士的例子，作为这种情况的一个极端例子，这个女士曾经重复地在迷糊的状态下逃离她的住宅和她的丈夫，然后赶往一个新的地方，同时一直都没有意识到她的用这种方式逃离的动机。 她来参加治疗，带着一种显著的充满深情的移情，这种移情在开始的几天里便以异乎寻常的速度强烈地增长；到那一周的周末时，在我有时间对她说一些也许能阻止这个重复（发生）的东西之前，她也逃离了我。
然而，用来约束病人的强迫性重复、使强迫性重复转变成一种回忆的动机之主要方法，存在于对移情的处理中。我们表示这种强迫是没有伤害的，并且通过在一个限定的领域内给它权利声张自己，这确实是有用的。
我们准许它（强迫性重复）进入这个如同一个运动场一样的移情，在这个运动场中，它允许以几乎完全自由的状态扩张，并且，在这个运动场中，期望它以致病的本能的方式向我们展示每个隐藏在病人脑海中的东西。
假如病人表现出足够的顺从来尊重这些分析必需的条件，我们就习惯地对疾病的所有症状成功给出一种新的移情含义，并且，成功地用一种“移情神经症”代替他日常的神经症，而这个移情神经症通过心理治疗的工作是能被治愈的。
因此，通过搭建从这一个到另一个的过渡，移情创造了一个在疾病和真实生活之间的中间区域。这个新的状态接收了疾病的所有特点；但是它表现的是一个仿造的疾病，这种疾病是我们的介入在每个点上都可以接近的。它是一段真实的经验，而不是通过有利的条件而变得合适的一段经验，并且它具有临时的性质。
从这些重复的、在移情中展现的行动中，我们被牵引着走在这条通往记忆唤起的熟悉道路上，在阻抗被克服之后，这些记忆会毫无困难地、如同它们曾经的那样，呈现。
如果不是这篇论文的题目，这个题目迫使我在精神分析技术里讨论一个更深的论点，我应该就此停住了。
正如我们所知，克服阻抗的第一步，是通过分析家揭示这些阻抗而迈出的，而这些阻抗从来没有被病人意识到，也没有被病人熟知。
现在看来，似乎精神分析实践中的初学者倾向于把这个初始的步伐当作是构成他们工作的全部。
我经常被要求在一些案例上提建议，在这些案例中，医生抱怨他已经向病人指出了其阻抗，然而却没有什么改变到来；实际上，这些阻抗变得愈发强烈，并且整个形势变得比以往都要晦暗、难以理解。 治疗似乎并没有取得进展。这个晦暗的预兆总被证明是错误的。通常治疗是在大部分令人满意的情况下前进的。只是，分析家忘记了，给予阻抗一个名字并不能导致它立即中止。
我们必须容许病人用一些时间来更加地熟悉这个他现在已经了解到的阻抗，从而根据分析的基本规则通过继续分析的工作而理会它（这个阻抗），来修通它，克服它。
只有在阻抗强盛的地方，联合病人一起工作，分析家才能发现了供养着阻抗的被压抑的本能冲动，并且，这是让病人相信那样的冲动存在及其力量的一种体验。
医生不用做其他的任何事情，除了等待和让事物按它们的进程发展，一个不能避免也不能加快的进程。如果他仅仅抓住这个信念，那么当他实际上正在正确的路线上实施治疗时，他会经常免去失败的错觉。
事实上，阻抗的修通可能结果是分析的主题的一个费力的任务和一个对分析家的耐性的一个考验。然而，它是在病人中引起最好的改变的工作和把精神分析性治疗从任何一种通过暗示的治疗中区别开来的工作的一部分。
从一个理论的观点看，我们可能会把它和被压抑所勒杀的情感的有限“宣泄”相关联----一种在催眠治疗仍旧没有效果的情况下的宣泄。
Freud, S. (1914). Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through (Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-Analysis II). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII (1911-1913): The Case of Schreber, Papers on Technique and Other Works, 145-156.
Freud, S. (1914). “Remembering,” “Repeating” and “Working-Through” (Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-Analysis II). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII (1911-1913): The Case of Schreber, Papers on Technique and Other Works, 145-156
“Remembering, Repeating” and “Working-Through” (Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-Analysis II)
Editor’s Note to "Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through (Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-Analysis II)"
Erinnern, Wiederholen Und Durcharbeiten
James Strachey
(a) German Editions:
1914 Int. Z. Psychoanal., 2 (6), 485-91.
1918 S.K.S.N., 4, 441-52. (1922, 2nd ed.)
1924 Technik und Metapsychol., 109-19.
1925 G.S., 6, 109-19.
1931 Neurosenlehre und Technik, 385-96.
1946 G.W., 10, 126-36.
(b) English Translation:
‘Further Recommendations in the Technique of Psycho-Analysis: Recollection, Repetition, and “Working-Through”‘ 1924 C.P., 2, 366-76. (Tr. Joan Riviere.)
The present translation, with a changed title, is a modified version of the one published in 1924.
At its original appearance (which was at the end of 1914) the title of this paper ran: ‘Weitere Ratschläge zur Technik der Psychoanalyse (II): Erinnern, Wiederholen und Durchar-beiten.’ The title of the English translation of 1924, quoted above, is a rendering of this. From 1924 onwards the German editions adopted the shorter title.
This paper is noteworthy, apart from its technical interest, for containing the first appearance of the concepts of the ‘compulsion to repeat’(p. 150) and of ‘”working-through”‘(p. 155)
Section Citation
Strachey, J. (1914). Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through (Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-Analysis II). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII (1911-1913): The Case of Schreber, Papers on Technique and Other Works, 145-156
It seems to me not unnecessary to keep on reminding students of the far-reaching changes which psycho-analytic technique has undergone since its first beginnings. In its first phase—that of Breuer’s catharsis—it consisted in bringing directly into focus the moment at which the symptom was formed, and in persistently endeavouring to reproduce the mental processes involved in that situation, in order to direct their discharge along the path of conscious activity. “Remembering” and abreacting, with the help of the hypnotic state, were what was at that time aimed at. Next, when hypnosis had been given up, the task became one of discovering from the patient’s free associations what he failed to remember. The resistance was to be circumvented by the work of interpretation and by making its results known to the patient. The situations which had given rise to the formation of the symptom and the other situations which lay behind the moment at which the illness broke out retained their place as the focus of interest; but the element of abreaction receded into the background and seemed to be replaced by the expenditure of work which the patient had to make in being obliged to overcome his criticism of his free associations, in accordance with the fundamental rule of psycho-analysis. Finally, there was evolved the consistent technique used today, in which the analyst gives up the attempt to bring a particular moment or problem into focus. He contents himself with studying whatever is present for the time being on the surface of the patient’s mind, and he employs the art of interpretation mainly for the purpose of recognizing the resistances which appear there, and making them conscious to the patient. From this there results a new sort of division of labour: the doctor uncovers the resistances which are unknown to the patient; when these have been got the better of, the patient often relates the forgotten situations and connections without any difficulty. The aim of these different techniques has, of course, remained the same. Descriptively speaking, it is to fill in gaps in memory; dynamically speaking, it is to overcome resistances due to repression.
We must still be grateful to the old hypnotic technique for having brought before us single psychical processes of analysis in an isolated or schematic form. Only this could have given us the courage ourselves to create more complicated situations in the analytic treatment and to keep them clear before us.
In these hypnotic treatments the process of “remembering” took a very simple form. The patient put himself back into an earlier situation, which he seemed never to confuse with the present one, and gave an account of the mental processes belonging to it, in so far as they had remained normal; he then added to this whatever was able to emerge as a result of transforming the processes that had at the time been unconscious into conscious ones.
At this point I will interpolate a few remarks which every analyst has found confirmed in his observations.5 Forgetting impressions, scenes or experiences nearly always reduces itself to shutting them off. When the patient talks about these ‘forgotten’ things he seldom fails to add: ‘As a matter of fact I’ve always known it; only I’ve never thought of it.’ He often expresses disappointment at the fact that not enough things come into his head that he can call ‘forgotten’—that he has never thought of since they happened. Nevertheless, even this desire is fulfilled, especially in the case of conversion hysterias. ‘Forgetting’ becomes still further restricted when we assess at their true value the screen memories which are so generally present. In some cases I have had an impression that the familiar childhood amnesia, which is theoretically so important to us, is completely counterbalanced by screen memories. Not only some but all of what is essential from childhood has been retained in these memories. It is simply a question of knowing how to extract it out of them by analysis. They represent the forgotten years of childhood as adequately as the manifest content of a dream represents the dream-thoughts.
The other group of psychical processes—phantasies, processes of reference, emotional impulses, thought-connections— which, as purely internal acts, can be contrasted with impressions and experiences, must, in their relation to forgetting and “remembering,” be considered separately. In these processes it particularly often happens that something is ‘remembered’ which could never have been ‘forgotten’ because it was never at any time noticed—was never conscious. As regards the course taken by psychical events it seems to make no difference whatever whether such a ‘thought-connection’ was conscious and then forgotten or whether it never managed to become conscious at all. The conviction which the patient obtains in the course of his analysis is quite independent of this kind of memory.
In the many different forms of obsessional neurosis in particular, forgetting is mostly restricted to dissolving thought-connections, failing to draw the right conclusions and isolating memories.
There is one special class of experiences of the utmost importance for which no memory can as a rule be recovered. These are experiences which occurred in very early childhood and were not understood at the time but which were subsequently understood and interpreted. One gains a knowledge of them “through” dreams and one is obliged to believe in them on the most compelling evidence provided by the fabric of the neurosis. Moreover, we can ascertain for ourselves that the patient, after his resistances have been overcome, no longer invokes the absence of any memory of them (any sense of familiarity with them) as a ground for refusing to accept them. This matter, however, calls for so much critical caution and introduces so much that is novel and startling that I shall reserve it for a separate discussion in connection with suitable material.3
Under the new technique very little, and often nothing, is left of this delightfully smooth course of events.4 There are some cases which behave like those under the hypnotic technique up to a point and only later cease to do so; but others behave differently from the beginning. If we confine ourselves to this second type in order to bring out the difference, we may say that the patient does not remember anything of what he has forgotten and repressed, but acts it out.3 He reproduces it not as a memory but as an action; he repeats it, without, of course, knowing that he is “repeating” it.
For instance, the patient does not say that he remembers that he used to be defiant and critical towards his parents’ authority; instead, he behaves in that way to the doctor. He does not remember how he came to a helpless and hopeless deadlock in his infantile sexual researches; but he produces a mass of confused dreams and associations, complains that he cannot succeed in anything and asserts that he is fated never to carry “through” what he undertakes. He does not remember having been intensely ashamed of certain sexual activities and afraid of their being found out; but he makes it clear that he is ashamed of the treatment on which he is now embarked and tries to keep it secret from everybody. And so on.
Above all, the patient will begin his treatment with a repetition of this kind. When one has announced the fundamental rule of psycho-analysis to a patient with an eventful life-history and a long story of illness and has then asked him to say what occurs to his mind, one expects him to pour out a flood of information; but often the first thing that happens is that he has nothing to say. He is silent and declares that nothing occurs to him. This, of course, is merely a repetition of a homosexual attitude which comes to the fore as a resistance against “remembering” anything. As long as the patient is in the treatment he cannot escape from this compulsion to repeat;4 and in the end we understand that this is his way of “remembering.” What interests us most of all is naturally the relation of this compulsion to repeat to the transference and to resistance. We soon perceive that the transference is itself only a piece of repetition, and that the repetition is a transference of the forgotten past not only on to the doctor but also on to all the other aspects of the current situation. We must be prepared to find, therefore, that the patient yields to the compulsion to repeat, which now replaces the impulsion to remember, not only in his personal attitude to his doctor but also in every other activity and relationship which may occupy his life at the time—if, for instance, he falls in love or undertakes a task or starts an enterprise during the treatment. The part played by resistance, too, is easily recognized. The greater the resistance, the more extensively will acting out (repetition) replace “remembering.” For the ideal “remembering” of what has been forgotten which occurs in hypnosis corresponds to a state in which resistance has been put completely on one side. If the patient starts his treatment under the auspices of a mild and unpronounced positive transference it makes it possible at first for him to unearth his memories just as he would under hypnosis, and during this time his pathological symptoms themselves are quiescent. But if, as the analysis proceeds, the transference becomes hostile or unduly intense and therefore in need of repression, “remembering” at once gives way to acting out. From then onwards the resistances determine the sequence of the material which is to be repeated. The patient brings out of the armoury of the past the weapons with which he defends himself against the progress of the treatment— weapons which we must wrest from him one by one.
We have learnt that the patient repeats instead of “remembering,” and repeats under the conditions of resistance. We may now ask what it is that he in fact repeats or acts out. The answer is that he repeats everything that has already made its way from the sources of the repressed into his manifest personality—his inhibitions and unserviceable attitudes and his pathological character-traits. He also repeats all his symptoms in the course of the treatment. And now we can see that in drawing attention to the compulsion to repeat we have acquired no new fact but only a more comprehensive view. We have only made it clear to ourselves that the patient’s state of being ill cannot cease with the beginning of his analysis, and that we must treat his illness, not as an event of the past, but as a present-day force. This state of illness is brought, piece by piece, within the field and range of operation of the treatment, and while the patient experiences it as something real and contemporary, we have to do our therapeutic work on it, which consists in a large measure in tracing it back to the past.
“Remembering,” as it was induced in hypnosis, could not but give the impression of an experiment carried out in the laboratory. “Repeating,” as it is induced in analytic treatment according to the newer technique, on the other hand, implies conjuring up a piece of real life; and for that reason it cannot always be harmless and unobjectionable. This consideration opens up the whole problem of what is so often unavoidable—’deterioration during treatment’.
First and foremost, the initiation of the treatment in itself brings about a change in the patient’s conscious attitude to his illness. He has usually been content with lamenting it, despising it as nonsensical and underestimating its importance; for the rest, he has extended to its manifestations the ostrich-like policy of repression which he adopted towards its origins. Thus it can happen that he does not properly know under what conditions his phobia breaks out or does not listen to the precise wording of his obsessional ideas or does not grasp the actual purpose of his obsessional impulse.6 The treatment, of course, is not helped by this. He must find the courage to direct his attention to the phenomena of his illness. His illness itself must no longer seem to him contemptible, but must become an enemy worthy of his mettle, a piece of his personality, which has solid ground for its existence and out of which things of value for his future life have to be derived. The way is thus paved from the beginning for a reconciliation with the repressed material which is coming to expression in his symptoms, while at the same time place is found for a certain tolerance for the state of being ill. If this new attitude towards the illness intensifies the conflicts and brings to the fore symptoms which till then had been indistinct, one can easily console the patient by pointing out that these are only necessary and temporary aggravations and that one cannot overcome an enemy who is absent or not within range. The resistance, however, may exploit the situation for its own ends and abuse the licence to be ill. It seems to say: ‘See what happens if I really give way to such things. Was I not right to consign them to repression?’ Young and childish people in particular are inclined to make the necessity imposed by the treatment for paying attention to their illness a welcome excuse for luxuriating in their symptoms.
Further dangers arise from the fact that in the course of the treatment new and deeper-lying instinctual impulses, which had not hitherto made themselves felt, may come to be ‘repeated’. Finally, it is possible that the patient’s actions outside the transference may do him temporary harm in his ordinary life, or even have been so chosen as permanently to invalidate his prospects of recovery.
The tactics to be adopted by the physician in this situation are easily justified. For him, “remembering” in the old manner— reproduction in the psychical field—is the aim to which he adheres, even though he knows that such an aim cannot be achieved in the new technique. He is prepared for a perpetual struggle with his patient to keep in the psychical sphere all the impulses which the patient would like to direct into the motor sphere; and he celebrates it as a triumph for the treatment if he can bring it about that something that the patient wishes to discharge in action is disposed of “through” the work of “remembering.” If the attachment “through” transference has grown into something at all serviceable, the treatment is able to prevent the patient from executing any of the more important repetitive actions and to utilize his intention to do so in statu nascendi as material for the therapeutic work. One best protects the patient from injuries brought about “through” carrying out one of his impulses by making him promise not to take any important decisions affecting his life during the time of his treatment—for instance, not to choose any profession or definitive love-object —but to postpone all such plans until after his recovery.
At the same time one willingly leaves untouched as much of the patient’s personal freedom as is compatible with these restrictions, nor does one hinder him from carrying out unimportant intentions, even if they are foolish; one does not forget that it is in fact only “through” his own experience and mishaps that a person learns sense. There are also people whom one cannot restrain from plunging into some quite undesirable project during the treatment and who only afterwards become ready for, and accessible to, analysis. Occasionally, too, it is bound to happen that the untamed instincts assert themselves before there is time to put the reins of the transference on them, or that the bonds which attach the patient to the treatment are broken by him in a repetitive action. As an extreme example of this, I may cite the case of an elderly lady who had repeatedly fled from her house and her husband in a twilight state and gone no one knew where, without ever having become conscious of her motive for decamping in this way. She came to treatment with a marked affectionate transference which grew in intensity with uncanny rapidity in the first few days; by the end of the week she had decamped from me, too, before I had had time to say anything to her which might have prevented this repetition.
The main instrument, however, for curbing the patient’s compulsion to repeat and for turning it into a motive for “remembering” lies in the handling of the transference. We render the compulsion harmless, and indeed useful, by giving it the right to assert itself in a definite field. We admit it into the transference as a playground in which it is allowed to expand in almost complete freedom and in which it is expected to display to us everything in the way of pathogenic instincts that is hidden in the patient’s mind. Provided only that the patient shows compliance enough to respect the necessary conditions of the analysis, we regularly succeed in giving all the symptoms of the illness a new transference meaning7 and in replacing his ordinary neurosis by a ‘transference-neurosis’8 of which he can be cured by the therapeutic work. The transference thus creates an intermediate region between illness and real life “through” which the transition from the one to the other is made. The new condition has taken over all the features of the illness; but it represents an artificial illness which is at every point accessible to our intervention. It is a piece of real experience, but one which has been made possible by especially favourable conditions, and it is of a provisional nature. From the repetitive reactions9 which are exhibited in the transference we are led along the familiar paths to the awakening of the memories, which appear without difficulty, as it were, after the resistance has been overcome.
I might break off at this point but for the title of this paper, which obliges me to discuss a further point in analytic technique. The first step in overcoming the resistances is made, as we know, by the analyst’s uncovering the resistance, which is never recognized by the patient, and acquainting him with it. Now it seems that beginners in analytic practice are inclined to look on this introductory step as constituting the whole of their work. I have often been asked to advise upon cases in which the doctor complained that he had pointed out his resistance to the patient and that nevertheless no change had set in; indeed, the resistance had become all the stronger, and the whole situation was more obscure than ever. The treatment seemed to make no headway. This gloomy foreboding always proved mistaken. The treatment was as a rule progressing most satisfactorily. The analyst had merely forgotten that giving the resistance a name could not result in its immediate cessation. One must allow the patient time to become more conversant with this resistance with which he has now become acquainted,10 to work “through” it, to overcome it, by continuing, in defiance of it, the analytic work according to the fundamental rule of analysis. Only when the resistance is at its height can the analyst, “working” in common with his patient, discover the repressed instinctual impulses which are feeding the resistance; and it is this kind of experience which convinces the patient of the existence and power of such impulses. The doctor has nothing else to do than to wait and let things take their course, a course which cannot be avoided nor always hastened. If he holds fast to this conviction he will often be spared the illusion of having failed when in fact he is conducting the treatment on the right lines.
This “working-through” of the resistances may in practice turn out to be an arduous task for the subject of the analysis and a trial of patience for the analyst. Nevertheless it is a part of the work which effects the greatest changes in the patient and which distinguishes analytic treatment from any kind of treatment by suggestion. From a theoretical point of view one may correlate it with the ‘abreacting’ of the quotas of affect strangulated by repression—an abreaction without which hypnotic treatment remained ineffective.11
Notes
1 [This is, of course, a reference to the ‘Wolf Man’ and his dream at the age of four. Freud had only recently completed his analysis, and he was probably engaged in writing the case history more or less simultaneously with the present paper, though it was only published some four years later (1918b). Before that time, however, Freud entered into a discussion of this special class of childhood memories in the later part of Lecture XXIII of his Introductory Lectures (1916-17).]
2 [Freud picks up his argument from where he left it at the beginning of the ‘interpolation’ on the previous page.]
3 [This had been made plain by Freud very much earlier, in his postscript to his analysis of ‘Dora’(1905e), Standard Ed., 7, 119, where the topic of transference is under discussion.]
4 [This seems to be the first appearance of the idea, which, in a much more generalized form, was to play such an important part in Freud’s later theory of the instincts. In its present clinical application, it reappears in the paper on ‘The Uncanny’ (1919h), Standard Ed., 17, 238, and is used as part of the evidence in support of the general thesis in Chapter III of Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920g), Standard Ed., 18, 18 ff., where there is a reference back to the present paper.]
5 [In the first edition only, this and the following three paragraphs (which make up the ‘interpolation’) were printed in smaller type.]
6 [See examples of this in the case histories of ‘Little Hans’ (1909b), Standard Ed., 10, 124, and of the ‘Rat Man’ (1909d), Standard Ed., 223.]
7 [‘übertragungsbedeutung.’ In the editions before 1924 this read ‘übertragungsbedingung’ (‘transference-determinant’).]
8 [The connection between this special use of the term and the usual one (to denote the hysterias and obsessional neurosis) is indicated in Lecture XXVII of the Introductory Lectures (1916-17).]
9 [In the first edition only, this read ‘repetitive actions’.]
10 [‘… sich in den ihm nun bekannten Widerstand zu vertiefen.’ Thus in the first edition only. In all the later German editions ‘nun bekannten’ was altered to ‘unbekannten’. This, however, seems to make less good sense: ‘to become more conversant with the resistance that is unknown to him.’]
11 [The concept of ‘working-through’, introduced in the present paper, is evidently related to the ‘psychical inertia’ which Freud discusses in several passages. Some of these are enumerated in an Editor’s footnote to a paper on a case of paranoia (1915f), Standard Ed., 14, 272. In Chapter XI, Section A (a) of Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926d), Freud attributes the necessity for ‘working-through’ to the resistance of the unconscious (or of the id), a subject to which he returns in Section VI of ‘Analysis Terminable and Interminable’ (1937c).]
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